Considering the idea of home, land-based artist Lydia Cheshewalla (Osage, Cherokee, Dakota, Modoc, Xicanx) shared the complexity of the many places she’s connected with throughout her life. “I feel like I’m just trying to make the world be my home,” she said. “Home has so many layers.” On November 1, 2023 The Block partnered with […]
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Facing the Camera, Rosalie Favell’s expansive portraiture project, began at an indigenous artist residency to which the artist arrived late – “not by hours,” she said. “But by weeks.” Uncertain of what to make, she drew inspiration from the extraordinary colleagues who had convened at the residency. She decided to create a large-format portrait series […]
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Who can claim knowledge of the human heart? Can poetry, art, and medicine each contribute to our understanding of this historically and biologically complex organ? In conjunction with the exhibition The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto the artist Dario Robleto invited Doris Taylor, director of regenerative medicine research at […]
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The partnership that yielded The Block Museum and the McCormick School of Engineering’s collaborative Artist-at-Large Program, which brought Dario Robleto to Northwestern from 2018-2023, began seven years ago when McCormick wanted to expose its students to more art. Kyle Delaney, the school’s executive director of strategic initiatives and marketing, and his team invited The Block […]
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Northwestern Engineering’s Malcolm MacIver is as surprised as anyone to find himself studying the neural basis of empathy. MacIver dropped out of school in the fourth grade for a mix of reasons that included having a learning disability and bullying. Because it was illegal for him to not be in school at that time, his family was […]
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The renowned Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul became fascinated as a young boy by the sounds and moving images his mother, a physician, could conjure with medical equipment – the beat of a human heart heard through a stethoscope, the sight of a microorganism wriggling under a microscope. “I think, more or less, at that time […]
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From her work in the 1970s as the Creative Director for NASA’s Voyager Interstellar Messaging Project to her current role as writer and producer of the beloved television series Cosmos, Ann Druyan has devoted her life to expanding the horizons of human empathy and communication. In insisting that the thresholds of cosmic exploration must be approached […]
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The breathtaking images produced by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes are no ordinary snapshots. To produce these sublime cosmic vistas, astronomers filter raw data into colors and configurations that guide the viewer’s understanding, making creative decisions in the service of scientific communication. In this dialogue on “interstellar aesthetics,” artist Dario Robleto was joined by […]
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What are the tools that artists and scientists use to observe and measure the unknown? On February 4, 2023, more than 400 guests joined The Block Museum of Art and the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University to celebrate the opening of the exhibition “The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of […]
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The exhibitionTaking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s on view at The Block in Fall 2022 explores mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora—a vast geographic expanse that encompasses diverse cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds. Comprising nearly 90 works by artists from countries including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, […]
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